The courts of Chisinau and district centers will be reorganized by merger into 15 courts. Parliament on March 11 approved the draft law on the reorganization of the courts of law in the first reading, IPN reports.
Minister of Justice Vladimir Cebotari said in Parliament that the bill provides for the reorganization and reduction in the number of common law courts, not yet of the appeals courts. This will allow the judges specialized in narrow areas to work according to qualification.
“This is now a problem as a judge can start workday with a criminal case and then have a civil case at noon, while towards evening can have to deal with judicial review proceedings. The bill does not allow reducing the number of judges. If we keep the courts of law, we will have to increase the number of judges four times in parts. This means increasing also the number of assistants and this will lead to higher costs,” said the minister.
A plan of action for fully reorganizing the judicial system will be worked out for a period of ten years. “In parallel, we will have to identify technical solutions to digitize the judicial system so as to improve access to courts,” stated Vladimir Cebotari.
The bill provides that the new courts of law will start work next January, but the merger of these new courts with the other courts will take place within ten years. The adoption of this law is provided in the justice sector reform strategy that is implemented with financial support from the European Union.
The Socialist, Communist and Liberal-Democratic MPs asked to withdraw the bill from the agenda and to postpone its adoption for the reason that it wasn’t finalized and that it does not ensure the real reformation of the judicial system. However, the bill was passed by the votes of 53 MPs.
